


Copycat

by thedevilchicken



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Dark Abigail Hobbs, F/F, Manipulation, Murder, Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-12
Updated: 2020-11-12
Packaged: 2021-03-08 22:21:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,486
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27340396
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thedevilchicken/pseuds/thedevilchicken
Summary: This wasn't what Freddie expected when she went looking for the Minnesota Shrike.
Relationships: Abigail Hobbs/Freddie Lounds
Comments: 3
Kudos: 14
Collections: Fic In A Box





	Copycat

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kimaracretak](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kimaracretak/gifts).



This wasn't what Freddie expected when she set out to find the Minnesota Shrike. 

It was the kind of town where everyone knew each other and pretended like they liked each other, even when they were seething with resentment underneath the pseudo-friendly smiles. Freddie knew the sort - she'd been to plenty of places just like it, where people smiled and waved and asked after their neighbors' health then contemplated putting strychnine in the potluck once they were tucked away safe behind closed doors. Once or twice, she'd seen that happen. Maybe not _seen_ seen, but she'd gotten there pretty fast afterwards; the photo she'd taken of the third victim's body, all arched and broken from the poison, paid her rent for a month in the two days she kept it up online. 

She's met killers before. She's helped catch killers before, though she'd be the first one to admit that's not usually the primary focus of her career - she'd've gone into law enforcement instead of into journalism were that the case and she has no real regrets on that score, though she guesses they both score just as highly on the Careers for Psychopaths scale. She's met killers, though, some of them in towns a whole lot like that one, and maybe she'd gotten a little cocky from the experience because honestly? She thought having met killers before meant she was ready for the Shrike. Turns out that wasn't entirely correct.

She met Abigail Hobbs in the parking lot of a shitty diner that served shitty coffee where she was waiting for a ride home. Freddie had been getting politely stonewalled everywhere she went for the past three hours but there was Abigail, stomping her feet to keep warm, hands tucked under her arms, glancing at her from the corner of her eye like maybe she thought Freddie hadn't noticed or wouldn't notice except she really wasn't subtle. She had that look like maybe she'd seen Freddie's photo online while she was doing research for class, or she just liked reading lurid true crime blogs. Or maybe it was just Freddie's bright red hair that somehow looked even redder when her face was pale from cold and she was forming a crush. Either way, she figured it was something she could use. 

When she hopped out of her rented car and made her way across the parking lot, she smiled and Abigail smiled back, shy and tentative. When she told her that her name was Freddie, she said her name was Abigail. When Freddie fumbled off one of her woolly mittens and stuck out her hand, Abigail took one leather glove off and they shook hands, bare skin to skin in the waning sun. A streetlight popped into fizzy life overhead that made them jump and they both looked up. When they both looked down again, Abigail was wide-eyed and so damned innocent that Freddie almost managed to feel guilty. Almost.

They sat on a bench together, shoulder to shoulder like there wasn't actually room for three or four, and they talked while Abigail was waiting for her ride to come. She kept glancing sideways, smiling, ducking her head, tucking her hair behind her ears though it slid straight back down. She kept glancing and then looking away, and Freddie made sure she held her gaze a touch too long each time, that she patted her knee every now and then, that when Abigail talked she seemed attentive. She was pretty, Freddie thought, in a small town girl next door kind of way. She had straight brown hair just like all the missing girls and something tugged inside Freddie's head like a connection she was missing, but she guessed she got that sometimes. She figured she just needed a good night's sleep, then maybe it would come. 

"Hey, can I buy you lunch tomorrow?" Freddie asked, when Abigail's dad's car pulled up, and Abigail smiled at her so brightly it was like she'd just offered her the moon. 

"Sure, I'd like that?" she said, frowning as she smiled. "Here?"

"Why not. Around one?"

Abigail nodded, ducking her head again, and then she ducked _again_ to get into the car. She waved through the window as her dad drove away and it was cute, Freddie thought, so she waved back. And sure, so maybe Abigail seemed a little young, but she really wasn't _that_ young; she'd told her she was nineteen years old and Freddie could usually spot a liar. Besides, she needed a friend; the town seemed even more close-knit than they usually were, or maybe that was just the cold dampening Freddie's veneer of geniality. 

They had lunch the next day, in the diner, sitting opposite each other in a cracked pleather booth where sometimes, not quite accidentally, Freddie's fingers brushed Abigail's as they reached for a spoon or a napkin, or Freddie just patted the back of her hand in a way she was pretty sure most late-teen girls didn't do with their late-teen girl friends. Abigail kept blushing, and brushing her hair back behind her ears, and when Freddie told her she was a vegetarian, she made an adorably anguished face and apologized for the burger she was eating. Then she told her, "Sometimes I wish I was, too." Freddie guesses she understands why now. At the time, it just seemed like she was trying too hard, or maybe she was sad for the cow.

The next day, Abigail introduced her to her friend Marissa, who talked a whole lot more but somehow seemed to have a whole lot less to say. She was another one like the missing girls, too - same height, same build, same long brown hair, and Freddie felt her brain trying to make that same connection as it had failed to do the day before. Marissa talked about school, and how weird it was that their boring old town had gotten involved in this thing with the Shrike, and how she thought maybe she'd get to go to college next fall. Abigail looked wistful, like she knew neither of them would ever leave, and jealous, like she thought maybe Freddie liked Marissa better. She didn't, but she did wonder if they both knew more than they were saying. She wondered if one of them did, at least. 

"You know, you don't have to stay here," Freddie told her, once Marissa was gone, as Abigail walked her back to her crappy motel room on the outskirts of town. It was the kind of place where the guy at the desk looked the other way and half the names scrawled in the register looked a lot like _Smith_ or _Jones_ , and he didn't even look up as the two of them walked past his window. Freddie had been trying not to lie awake in bed at night and think about all the people who'd had sex on the mattress she was trying to sleep on. In a split second at the door, while they were saying goodnight, she decided, _hey, why not make one more?_

When she kissed her, on the mouth by her locked door with the key in one mittened hand, Abigail's eyes got wide and she flinched away. Freddie just raised her eyebrows and tilted her head; she didn't have to ask if she'd read the signals wrong, because Abigail stared, with the tips of her leather-gloved fingers pressed against her parted lips, and they both knew it was surprise, not rejection. She didn't need to ask if she wanted to come in, either; she just unlocked the door and went inside and left the door wide open. Abigail followed. She closed the door slowly. When she turned around, she was biting her lip. When Freddie started to undress, Abigail's bottom lip was still between her teeth. Once Freddie was naked, her lips parted instead.

Abigail was wearing white cotton underwear underneath her clothes, nothing really sexy or provocative but _sexy_ and _provocative_ weren't things that Freddie had expected. It was cold and Freddie cranked the heat and the unit shuddered kind of like Abigail did, standing there with her hands tucked underneath her arms once she was naked, like she was stuck halfway between freezing cold and embarrassed at herself. Freddie took her hands and when she bared her breasts her nipples were stiffened into peaks, though Freddie guessed that was as much from the way her fingertips brushed over them as from the room's cold air. 

It might have been easier - and warmer - to slip into the bed and underneath the blankets but when Freddie laid her down, it was on top of them. Abigail was blushing, eyes wide, hands closing on two fistfuls of the scratchy motel linen like that was just to stop herself from covering up, and Freddie shivered as she settled down between her thighs. She let her hair spill over Abigail's pale skin as she ducked her head down lower and, as she traced her slit with the tip of her tongue, she heard Abigail gasp. She liked that, she thought, so she teased her till she gasped again, her thumbs opening her up so she could run her tongue around her clit. Honestly, it didn't take much. And afterwards, Abigail blushed as Freddie watched her dress. When she was gone, Freddie spread her legs and finished herself off, too.

The next day, Abigail knocked on the motel room door bright and early in the morning; it was the time they'd agreed, but Freddie was still dressing, on purpose, so she'd have Abigail's full attention as she bared her breasts pulling off her nightdress and pulling on a bra. Then, they went out into the woods. There was something she wanted to show her, Abigail had told her, in bed, the night before, her eyes all lit up like she knew precisely what Freddie wanted. She'd looked like she had precisely the clues Freddie was looking for.

"Why do you have a gun?" Freddie asked, as they walked, and when Abigail frowned at her, she gestured at the rifle slung over her shoulder. 

"Oh!" Abigail replied, like she'd forgotten it was there. "The woods can be kinda dangerous. But it's fine, my dad taught me to hunt." 

Somehow, though, that didn't feel particularly reassuring. But somehow, though, Freddie didn't seem to mind. 

The cabin rose out of the woods so rapidly that Freddie almost didn't notice it before they were both standing at the door. Abigail went inside and held the door and Freddie followed her, curious, _so_ curious, that trait that's led her into trouble more times than she can count. She figures she should've known something was wrong, walking through the woods in the cold with a girl with a gun, walking into a cabin in the middle of nowhere, the smile on Abigail's face as she kept looking back. She'd thought she could handle it. As Abigail took her upstairs, as she saw the girl there on the antlers, the fucking hubris of her actions wasn't lost on her. She guessed at least it wasn't her, or at least it wasn't _yet_ , but Abigail didn't raise the gun.

"Is this what you wanted?" Abigail asked, and she chewed her lip like all she wanted in the world was to please her. She knew the girl's face: Marissa Schurr was hanging there, dripping, like she was waiting for a butcher's knife. Marissa was hanging there, another brown-haired girl gone missing. And perhaps she should have been appalled - she should have felt sick, repulsed, all those other words she was sure meant things. But sickness and repulsion really weren't her primary emotion.

Slowly, Freddie smiled. Slowly, she twisted a lock of bright red hair around one finger and she realized she understood: the gun really wasn't for her. And maybe it wasn't strychnine in the potluck this time, but she was glad she'd thought to bring her camera all the same. Maybe she could get two months' rent out of the blood and guts and not just one. And then, back at her car, as soon as she had signal on her phone again, she called the cops. Or maybe it wasn't _as soon as_ ; she pushed Abigail up against the side of her car first. She pulled one mitten off and pushed her bare hand down the front of Abigail's jeans. She made her come against her fingers, gasping, standing there, and caught her when her knees went weak.

Abigail wasn't the Shrike. _Abigail wasn't the Shrike_. They made that clear throughout the investigation, when Will Graham and the FBI turned up to arrest Garrett Jacob Hobbs - Abigail hadn't had the first idea of what her father was, not really, and the idea of it made her sick through and through. Abigail Hobbs was a good girl, a nice girl, quiet but friendly and absolutely not a killer, and no one could prove wasn't true. The Shrike died with her father, but Freddie knew the truth. She still knows. 

These days, Abigail still eats meat and Freddie's still a vegetarian, and when Abigail visits and brings her own food, Freddie's pretty glad of the convenient excuse. She's at college now, living surprisingly well on what she made from the book they wrote, but one day she's going to need to work and she says maybe she'll be a writer, too. Freddie's pretty sure there's ghouls enough out there in the world that publishing won't be an issue; all the books will need is Abigail's name on the cover and they'll fly right off the shelves. In the meantime, she has her to herself. All those long-distance video calls where Abigail strips and spreads her legs and does everything that Freddie says until the next time they're together...that's really just a bonus.

And, every now and then, there's a new photograph to post on Freddie's blog. Every now and then, the FBI claims the Shrike has a new copycat. Abigail was with her, Freddie says when they come calling; they ordered takeout and watched a movie on the couch while they braided one another's hair. They were fucking - she could draw them a diagram of where Abigail's tongue was at the time the murder happened, if maybe that would help. 

This wasn't what Freddie expected when she set out to find the Minnesota Shrike. Frankly, she hadn't expected much back then - maybe the hint of a story, a photograph or two of a creepy crime scene after the FBI caught him, maybe a few words with the scandalized neighbors before they closed ranks or figured out they could sell their stories, not just give them away to her for free. 

This wasn't what Freddie expected. Since the day they met, she's taught Abigail how to please her in so very many ways.

This wasn't what Freddie expected. It's better.


End file.
